It’s easy to be infuiated by stories of cops treating people differently based on their clothes. It smack of class bias. But this is really just one example of a general feature of human decision making: we make decisions based on usually-reliable cues that are open to manipulaton. The classic example is price: we tend [...]
Category Archives: mind
Is religion hard-wired?
Posted by Chris Hallquist on September 21, 2009
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This is an issue that gets btted around a lot in atheist blogs, and there’s a new study out arguing the answer is no. The argument is that since religion declines as societies become more stable and prosperous, religion can’t be hardwired, at least not at the level of language. Instead, it must be a [...]
Sexual liberation = social collapse?
Posted by Chris Hallquist on September 3, 2009
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Last summer, I wrote a post predicting that informal polygamy would be a consequence of the sexual revolution. Since then, I’ve encountered a blogger named Roissy, who’s says much the same thing, with a couple additions: one, the world of casual hook-ups and serial monogomay gives is already a lot like informal polygamy. Oh, and [...]
Inside the twisted minds of politicians
Posted by Chris Hallquist on August 27, 2009
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Wilkinson: I too find it hard to get inside the heads of politicians, and I don’t find rational choice assumptions very illuminating in this regard. By insisting that politicians are motivated by considerations no different than businessmen or anybody else, public choice economists have helped slay the pernicious myth that politicians are generally warmly other-regarding [...]
The real problem with alpha males
Posted by Chris Hallquist on August 14, 2009
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Yglesias and Fiedersdorf have begun saying that the idea of the alpha male–which, applied to humans, has become a pop-culture cliche–is based on outdated research on wolves. This is wrong. Here’s the truth: we’ve known, for decades, that animals form dominance hierarchies largely based on fighting ability (though in primates political savvy plays a role). [...]